BP Case Will Be One of Largest Ever for DOJ

By

Thomas Catan

Updated June 18, 2010 8:13 p.m. ET

As head of a team of 40 criminal prosecutors investigating the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster, it will be
Stacey Mitchell's
job to help manage one of the largest and most complex environmental investigations ever handled by the Justice Department.

A large part of the task, however, will involve heading off potential clashes between different arms of the government. Her team of Washington-based prosecutors in the Justice Department's environmental section will work with dozens of federal and state agencies, and multiple companies, including
BP
and
Transocean
,
according to people familiar with the matter.

The U.S. Attorney's offices in affected states like Louisiana will be providing crucial input on the ground. State attorneys general from Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama also have their own investigations underway and have agreed to pool their resources and share documents. The Justice Department's Environmental Enforcement Section, led by
Bruce Gelber,
is conducting its own civil investigation into the oil disaster.

In a case of this importance, Attorney General
Eric Holder
will almost certainly make the ultimate call whether to bring criminal charges. But he will be armed with the recommendation of Ms. Mitchell's team at the Environment and Natural Resources Division, which is headed by
Ignacia Moreno,
and her deputy,
John Cruden,
according to people familiar with the matter. The Justice Department declined to comment and declined a request to interview Ms. Mitchell.

Former colleagues say Ms. Mitchell, a career prosecutor and native of Colorado, is well-equipped to handle the bureaucratic wrangling that often accompanies such a sprawling case.

"No one's better at working through the kind of personality conflicts and disagreements that can emerge in a large, complex investigation with a lot of different agencies and offices involved," said
David Uhlmann,
her predecessor as head of the Justice Department's environmental crimes section.

Ms Mitchell has faced BP before. Under her tenure, the department secured guilty pleas from BP subsidiaries in connection with the 2005 explosion at its Texas City refinery, which killed 15 workers, and a separate pipeline oil spill in Prudhoe Bay, Alaska. The company pleaded guilty to conspiring to corner the Texas propane market in 2004. In all, the company agreed to pay more than $370 million in criminal fines and restitution to resolve the cases, and was placed under probation for three years.

Things went less well for Ms. Mitchell's environmental crimes section in a case against chemical maker W.R. Grace & Co. and several of its executives. Last year, a jury acquitted them of having knowingly exposed residents of a small Montana mining town to asbestos and then hid the deadly threat.

Ms. Mitchell received her law degree from Tulane University Law School. After a four-year stint as an Assistant District Attorney in the Manhattan District Attorney's office, she joined the Justice Department in 1998. She was named head of the environmental crimes section in 2007.

Ms. Mitchell, and other colleagues handling the case, will be under extraordinary pressure to hold people accountable for the environmental disaster. But former Justice Department officials say she keeps a cool head and won't push the case further than it reasonably should go.

"I think she would do what she thinks is the proper thing to do -- even if it did mean not bringing any criminal charges," said a former department official.

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